You think you have problems Rick Cato tells the story of Mathieu Boya: “Boya was practicing his golf swing in a pasture adjacent to Africa’s Benin Air Base. With one swing of the golf club, Boya set off an unbelievable series of events. The shot, described as ‘a glorious slice,’ hit a bird, which in turn dropped onto the windshield of a trainer jet whose pilot was taxiing into position for takeoff. The pilot lost control of his plane and plowed into four shiny Mirage jets, totally demolishing the entire air force of Benin. Boya was jailed immediately for ‘hooliganism,’ and his attorney said he had no chance of winning a trial. The country wanted Boya to pay $40 million to replace the jets. Since Boya made only $275 per year, he figured it would take 145,000 years to pay off his debt to society.” Now there’s a man with a problem.
Our problems are usually much smaller. I read this week that Neil Armstrong has a problem. The Apollo 11 astronaut, who was the first man to walk on the moon, is suing to get his hair back. He used to go to Marx’s Barber Shop in Lebanon, Ohio, about once a month, but that stopped when he learned that the owner, Marx Sizemore, had swept up his hair clippings and sold them to a collector for $3,000. The collector claims to also have clippings from the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, as well as other celebrities. One paper quipped: “One small trim for Neil Armstrong, one giant profit for Barber.”
In contrast, the people we read about in the scripture reading today were people with real problems. A father has a little girl who is dying. A woman has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Two men are blind. Another man is inhabited by a demonic spirit and was unable to talk. These were all very serious problems, but in the space of 17 verses, Jesus healed them all. Let’s take a look at their stories one at a time.
The first story is that of a desperate father. His daughter lay dying and he runs to Jesus and falls at his feet begging him to come to his home and heal his daughter. He is the leader of the local synagogue, and we learn elsewhere that his name is Jairus. Jesus agrees to go, but it is not a smooth transition to the house where the little girl is on her death bed. The trip is interrupted by another person in desperate need. It must have been enormously frustrating to the father to have this delay. I can see him wishing Jesus would focus on the task before him and not get distracted. They did not have much time, in fact, unknown to the father at that moment, time had run out. The Gospel of Mark tells us that people came from Jairus’ house saying, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher any more?” (Mark 5:35). You can almost hear the father’s scream of grief. But Jesus simply says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
When Jesus arrives at the home, the mourners are wailing and playing low mournful tunes on the flute in a minor key. Jesus said, “Stop wailing. She is not dead but asleep.” Then the Bible says they laughed at him, because they knew she was dead. But Jesus took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up ” (Luke 8:52-54). It is interesting that we are not told what the reaction was of those who were laughing at him just a few minutes before. The assumption is that they were so amazed and ashamed that they were at a total loss for words. What could they say? Words of doubt and sarcasm could never be more out of place.
The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage may actually have been helpful to Jairus. It may have enabled him to to have more faith as he witnessed the power of Jesus to heal and restore this woman. He would need all the help he could get, for when he entered the home, heard the wailing of the mourners and saw the look on his wife’s face, all hope was drained from his heart. Jairus and all the people in the home knew that the girl was dead. But Jesus said that she was only asleep, meaning that the death was not permanent. He would see to it that she would wake up from this death.
So here we have Jesus’ amazing power over death. Everything the evil one came to destroy and take away, Jesus came to restore. This is not the devil’s world, this is God’s world. He made it and it belongs to him. Now we get glimpses of the restoration, but one day it will be final and complete. The Bible says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). What he has done in the past he can still do today, and one day he will do it all in finality. We serve a God who restores and renews. We serve a Christ who forgives, heals and raises from the dead. And Jesus did this despite the fear and doubt of the parents and their friends. There were no requirements on their part. There was only one request that Jesus made: “Don’t be afraid; only believe.” He wanted them to trust him. And even though this was the request of Jesus, we have no indication that they were able to live up to it. This is the kind of gracious compassion Jesus shows for those in need.
The second person we meet is actually a part of the first story. She is the woman who stopped the procession to Jairus’ house. There were many thousands of people who needed a healing in the time of Jesus, but almost always it is those who come to him and pursue him who find healing. Many stayed away for whatever reason. However, Jairus came begging Jesus. The woman with the flow of blood pressed through the crowd until she was able to touch Jesus. Jesus honors those who ask, seek and knock. He answers those who are persistent. Not much happens with people who give up. Jesus said that we should “always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1).
Sometimes we wonder why we don’t hear more about healing in our day. Actually there are many healings that take place, but they do not always come to the attention of the media. Recently an Associated Press article tells about a new study on prayer and healing: “Heart patients who were prayed for had fewer complications in recovery, a study found. The Mid America Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City studied 990 coronary patients in one year. The first names of half the patients were given to religious believers who prayed for four weeks that they would have a speedy recovery with no complications. The prayed-for patients had 10% fewer complications, the study published in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine said. Researchers said the study suggests that prayer facilitates healing.”
I have often been told by the people on our prayer list that they have “felt” the prayers of the people of our church and credit them with their healing. My granddaughter Rachel is alive today, after a struggle with cancer, because of the prayers of God’s people. Even though she was getting the best medical care in the world, there were days we did not think she was going to make it. These people and many others have experienced healing in their lives. In fact, all of us have been healed. All of us have been sick, and if that sickness, even a cold, was not eventually healed, we would have died. Your surgeon has cut and stitched, but only God healed the wound. We have all experienced healing, but we have taken the healing process for granted. As with the woman in the crowed who believed she could be healed by touching Jesus, real healing comes when we reach out to God for healing, and we expect him to reach out to us. We touch the hem of his garment believing that he will touch us back. We reach out expectantly in faith.
The next people we meet in the scripture today are two blind men. Again, these are men who are not wallowing in sel-pitying doubt. They are on a mission of faith. They are yelling at the top of their lungs for Jesus to help them because they believe he can heal them. They called him the “Son of David,” which was a title for the Messiah. Here are two blind men who see Jesus more clearly than many of the people around who had eyes. Their eyes did not work, but their faith was intact. These blind men had spiritual sight when many people around with perfectly good eyes were spiritually blind. It was really the spiritually blind who needed healing more than these men, but they were too blind to see it and come to Jesus. These men were blind as a bat, but they had spiritual radar that led them directly to Jesus.
Jesus talked of those who could see, but refused to see, when he said, “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them” (Matthew 13:15). You need to make sure that your spiritual sickness is healed before you come for physical healing, for it is far more serious.
The last person we meet in this scripture is a demon-possessed man who could not talk. (I just want to speak parenthetically to any wives here today and say that just because your husband cannot talk does not necessarily mean he is possessed by a demon — although you may believe that is also true.) The condition of this man is the most serious of all. He is in mortal danger. Evil has possessed his heart, and he is not so much in danger of physical death as he is of spiritual death. He has been incapacitated by the evil which resides within him, so that he cannot come to Jesus on his own, but has to be brought by others. But, again, this is not a problem for Jesus, he has the ability to bring about a powerful deliverance and healing.
This is actually a disturbing story to us who live in a culture where we want to explain everything in scientific terms and reduce them to understandable formulas in the attempt to make them fit the therapeutic model. We tend to want to deny evil — its reality and presence in the world. But an understanding of evil is making a comeback — reality is forcing us to face it. The New York Times recently ran an article this past February entitled: “For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be ‘Evil’.” In the article, the author Benedict Carey writes, “Many career forensic examiners say their work forces them to reflect on the concept of evil, and some acknowledge they can find no other term for certain individuals they have evaluated.” Carey also writes that, “A prominent personality expert at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior. . . . He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis.”
Haven’t some of the gruesome things in the news recently caused you to think about the reality of evil? Are these just people with bad parents and poor home lives, or is there something else at work? Has there been a cooperation with evil on the part of some people which has brought about a warpedness and sickness of the human spirit? The Christian story has always taken evil seriously. In fact, the Christian story has always recognized a personal source of evil. The Bible is filled with accounts of people who have cooperated with that source and been perverted by it. But the Christian story also proclaims that there is redemption and deliverance from the power of evil. People who come to Christ do not have to be controlled by the power of evil, they are liberated by the power of God. With this kind of healing there is always forgiveness, peace and rest from the storm within.
And this potential of evil does not just exist in serial killers and child abusers, it exists in every human heart. For each of us, this has been our story and struggle. But we have a Savior. We have a Deliverer. We have a God who is able to change our hearts so that we no longer desire what is evil, but what is good. By the power of God we no longer have to obey the driving force within.
Real healing comes when we move away from the source of evil toward the Source of healing. We have come to understand that life and health are found in Jesus Christ. The closer we move to him, the more health we experience spiritually, mentally, and as a result, physically. The more we experience him the more we understand that he is the meaning and source of life.
A couple of years ago, Newsweek magazine ran an article on “Faith and Healing.” The article began with this unsettling story: “On a quiet Saturday afternoon, Ming He, a fourth-year medical student in Dallas, came across a man dying in the VA Hospital. Suffering from a rare cancer and hooked up to an oxygen tank, the man, an Orthodox Jew, could barely breathe, let alone speak. There were no friends or relatives by his bed to comfort him. When the young student walked into his room, the man looked at her and said, ‘Now that I’m dying, I realize that I never really learned how to live.’ Ming He, 26, had no idea how to respond.”
Those who know Jesus know exactly how to respond. They have found healing and they have experienced life, because they have come to know the Creator of life himself. They did nothing to deserve this except to hold out their hand and believe that his hand would be extended in response.
The Bible says, “Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all” (Luke 6:19).
Rodney J. Buchanan
June 5, 2005
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
